One belongs to New York instantly. One belongs to it as much in five minutes as in five years.

I have so much to tell you. Felicity sent to me the above quote (by Thomas Wolfe) before I even had a trip to New York City planned. And now it’s become my mantra. I loved New York City. I loved it like Sabrina loved Paris. (Though don’t rule me out for adopting that city one day too). People ask me my favorite part of the trip, and I say, “Waking up.” I loved getting up each morning knowing that city was just outside my door. I loved walking its streets and entering its coffee shops and discovering its most famous landmarks for myself. I loved viewing it from above and even riding its trains below. I loved the overwhelming mass of humanity on Times Square and the miraculous quiet just blocks away in Central Park. And I loved the people.

There are lots of places I want to visit one day. Washington D.C. was one of them, and now I have. Paris is one. The Grand Canyon, Japan, Greece, Italy. They’re all on the list, and many more. But New York was different. I didn’t want to just observe it from its sky-high decks and stroll through its streets with a camera. I wanted to actually go inside. I wanted to meet New York. I was hoping that when I met Manhattan, Manhattan would meet me.

And then, in the last few years, it began to happen. I met a blogger and writer who works in New York City. I got a literary agent from there. And I started working for a travel company. Thanks to all of these things, my first trip to New York could not have been better if my favorite celebrity had marched up to me and asked, “You’re Serenity, right?”

The travel gig got us some very fun perks – a meeting in the Empire State Building (plus we got to skip the line to the top and we got to see the publicity shots that only VIPs usually see), a visit at the table with restaurant managers, and a plethora (well, a handful) of wonderful New York City guides giving us the real-deal, inside scoop on everything from celebrity sightings (“Hey, there went that famous Fox News guy…”) to 9/11 (more on that later and how we cried…).

And then I got to meet my agent and my friend, and that’s when it all came together and I knew I was living, breathing, walking in a total dream come true. I met my agent, Holly, on Wednesday. She changed the spot last-minute since I was trapped in a long (but very cool) tour at Tommy Hilfiger. We met in a little coffee shop where I discovered the news of her loveliness has been understated to a massive degree. No superlative quite does justice to how lucky I feel to have met this person, let alone signed with her on a professional level. NO SUPERLATIVE.

And then I met Anne Dayton of anneandmay.com, and I might have signed a real estate agreement then and there to live nearby these people if I didn’t think I’d have to leave my husband to do it. I wanted to hug both Holly and Anne after everything they said. I restrained myself. If I didn’t think they might read this I would gush even more, because they made my trip to New York what it was. I went – theoretically – for the Empire State Building and Top of the Rock and Tommy Hilfiger. But I’m going back for them.

For me, New York is like the ocean. I love life on earth so much more just remembering that it’s out there. Its enormity gives me perspective, shrinking my small stresses and sweeping the large ones into the stream of all human striving so that I no longer feel alone in them. It was a dream come true to go there once and to have friends to greet once I arrived. But for me it definitely didn’t feel like once-in-a-lifetime. It just felt like a first.

My next several posts will be more about the trip I’m sure. I don’t think you’ll be bored. No historical site or New York City experience is safe from my life-sized introspection. Emotional connections galore.

UPDATE** Here is a link to my NYC pictures on facebook.

“Though it’s hard to let you go, in the Father’s hands we know / that a lifetime’s not too long to live as friends.”

Anne and May have a new book out, the fourth in their Miracle Girls series, and they’re devoting their blog this week to the theme, Friends are Friends Forever, which is a Christian song from the 80s and you haven’t lived unless you’ve tried to sing it through TEARS while sending a friend off to a big move or high school graduation. If I blog about a forever friend this week, I get entered in a contest to win their books. I don’t really need to win, because I’ve already bought them all. But oh the nostalgia of that theme.

This is the friend I’m writing about. Her name is Lee. I have a few billion LIFE THEORIES that come from knowing Lee. I’m not even kidding. And because I can’t tell you about every movie night, every youth group meeting, and every year of my life with Lee that led to how much I love her, I’m going to to tell you the stories behind those life theories instead. And that should tip the iceberg for ya on everything wonderful that is Lee.

In youth group, she used to call us Peeps (short for People). That was the first thing I copied from her. One friend at my own school accepted it as a Serenity original and even signed my yearbook with the handle.

Before Lee turned sixteen, she wanted to drive in the church parking lot, and her mom wouldn’t let her, to which Lee famously (in our circles anyway) tossed her mom the keys and sighed, “Come on, Mom. Live a little.” Which immediately became my motto.

Lee was the first of us to get married, and everything I fantasized about being a newlywed came from their tiny apartment and their best-friendish love and the two-seated bicycle they rode at their wedding reception. Around that time Lee became Lee and Peter, and a lot of my life theories are from both of them.

Lee is the reason I think Friday the Thirteenth is cool. She was born on that day. She’s pretty much the funnest person on the planet, and with or without her own love for Friday the Thirteenth, she changed my opinion about the day forever. I now think of it as the Day When Any Good Thing Might Happen. Something good, like Lee.

When she had her first baby, she laughed. Everyone still tells that story around here. Because it’s amazing. Because no matter how brave the rest of us were – and some of us not so much – Lee’s the only one remembered for actually laughing clear through the delivery. Which, as if you can’t see where this is going, changed my perspective on labor forever and removed all the scarring from hundreds of times I sat at a table with middle-aged women sharing their labor horror stories. Lee’s laughter washed it all away.

She and Peter have a big house now, and it’s full of things they love and things they’ve bought for their kids, and things they’ve moved through various stages of old and broken to new and cool. One of the first times we visited there, a mess or two lay around, and Lee said happily, “If we waited to have a perfect house before we had people over, we’d never have anyone over at all.” And immediately I knew I had to develop that kind of hospitality too or perish in the attempt. My oldest son is in class with Lee’s oldest son and after a recent birthday party John got in our car and said, “That was the best slumber party EVER.” And I laughed clear to my toes, because of course it was. It was Lee and Peter.

They’re moving soon. And not moving, like, just out of town to a country house or across town to a bigger one. Lee and Peter are moving across the ocean, back to Sweden where Peter is from. And I think the only reason my heart isn’t completely broken in two is because it doesn’t seem like something Lee would do. It would be much more Lee-like to buy a jar the size of my 4-year-old and put it in a corner of the dining room. And every time anyone found a penny, a quarter, or a dollar bill – into the jar it would go, clanking behind the label, “So We Can Visit the Pihlstroms Someday”. I think I’ll try something like that. But since I’m not Lee altogether and I only want to be like her, I’ll also probably cry a little.

Yes, yes it is.

It didn’t take me long to figure out that I was using a lot of extra gas to drive (slightly) out of town for a couple hours a day (four days a week) and that I was losing precious minutes of actual work in order to drive to and from. And, although I found an initial creativity surge for my work by being around the travel talk and such, that boost kind of faded too.

But the thing I’ve noticed is, people help. I like people. I like how they care when you come and go. I like having someone to say things to, like, “I can’t not talk with a drawl when I’m on the phone with a southern girl” or “I love this song; Pandora wins again.” I like that no one is tired or blue or having a Monday at exactly the same time. When you’re blue, I’m perky. When I’m having a Monday on Thursday, you’re hanging shamrocks for St. Patrick’s Day. I like not doing that whole 9-5 thing alone.

Because the thing is, I am an alone kind of person. I’m in my head a lot, thinking about things, following analytical rabbit trails that there’s no way any other person could stay with me for. And you know what I love? When I end up in a conversation with someone and realize – oh my goodness, they think about things too. And I can’t follow all their rabbit trails either, but it’s so validating that I’m not the only one who has them. It’s like the line in P.S. I Love You: If we’re all alone, then we’re together in that too.

And it’s not just in a work day that people help. There is so much happening on my computer these days – I mean, work happens there, my dream (i.e., the novel), and leisure (i.e., blog reading, Peoplemag.com, and Scarecrow and Mrs. King on in2tv.com). I could probably – though not without severe mental and eyeball fatigue – spend morning until night on my laptop. You can even sort of half way feel like you’re with people, thanks to facebook and twitter, email, and blog comments.

But then I leave the house. I breathe fresh air, I go to something like my son’s fourth grade Wax Museum of Famous Missourians (did you know Bob Barker is from here?!) and I run into good friends, new friends, my son’s friend’s parents, my children’s teachers, and there’s talking and shared exasperation over our crazy preschoolers and the long line of cars in the McDonalds drive-thru lane because we weren’t the only ones who couldn’t manage supper between work and a school function. And that’s when I feel fully alive, when I’m with people.

It seems weird to write a blog about how I need to get off this darn computer more. But that’s what’s on my mind. Because this week has been stuffed with good friends, lovely sisters, cousins at a basketball game (the picture above), and the aforementioned costumed 10-year-olds delivering speeches about Brad Pitt, Walt Disney, and Joyce C. Hall (huge points for the person who doesn’t have to google him, the man whose name my son drew from the hat). And I feel glad. Glad that I live in a world, with people.

Every day at least one person left a message on the site, telling me they were praying for me, thinking of me and Jake – then known only as “the baby” – anxious to hear the latest update. It was always at least one because on the day that no one wrote, Uncle Kris wrote again.

And there were so many – people who knew me before I was born, people who didn’t meet me until fifth grade when I moved to Edina, people who’d only known me a few years. I was constantly afraid I would run into one of them in town – a person who’d taken the time to write on that site – and in the midst of the stress I was facing and the fact that there were so many, I wouldn’t think to say it. “Thank you so much for writing. It made all the difference in the world.” And that would be awful. How in the world could I possibly thank each one? How could I make them know that their words, their quotation, their scripture, meant as much to me as the next person’s did, as much as the person’s before that. Each one as special as if that person was the first and only person to think of me.

I couldn’t. I couldn’t convince anyone of that. I would run into people I wouldn’t stop to thank. And no one would ever know exactly how I cried or laughed when I read their comment, or when I took a breath and realized that oh-thank-God, perhaps I can face the next day after all.

Luke was one of those friends, and his wife Angela. And maybe this one little thing I can do for them will mean as much to them as their emotional support meant to me.

If you like coffee – take a look at the link to the right and consider buying Grounds for Hope. It’s certified Fair Trade. So it doesn’t just put money towards an adoption Luke and Angela are pursuing. It means something to families in developing countries as well.

If anyone else who left even two words on that website needs to raise money for your own adoption or a barn-raising or world travel, you know where to come. And if any of you wondered if I noticed that you wrote, I hope now you know that I did.

It’s been arranged for years. By a woman who loved me more, I think, than I even knew. And I knew she loved me a lot.

She lived within walking distance. Her apartment was literally on the other end of a beautiful walking path that is a few steps from my house. And I saw her rarely. Very few times in the last several years.

This woman prayed me through every single faith crisis I’ve ever had. Every single one. She prayed me through cancer too. And motherhood and sorrow and marriage and graduations and regular ol’ life.

I saw her last night… before. And she said, “Hi, Serenity,” though it was difficult to understand. And then she looked right at me and asked, “What took you so long?”

I was there late last night to pick up a friend. It’s about a 3-hour drive for me, and I thrilled to every single minute on the road. I listened to the Shall We Dance soundtrack and got all kinds of inspiration for that novel I mentioned in the last post. Which was very nostalgic because I was on a drive to the airport the first time I got a specific idea about that book. It was a conversation – well, a question and then an answer – between two characters. I pulled over and scribbled it down even though at the time I didn’t even have a book to build around it.

Last night I discovered another conversation those characters should have. It refers to the first, and I liked it so much, I welled. I hope it’s indicative of my nearness to finishing the first draft that on this drive the conversation I planned belongs at the END.

So the three hours to the airport were all me and “Moon River” and the image of my character standing in front of her dream life, knowing she could maybe actually get it after all. It was heavenly. And then the three hours home were nonstop conversation with a friend, which everyone knows is the perfect balance to nonstop creative illusions with your self.

Then I came home to husband and children tucked sweetly in bed, the promise of a three-day weekend, and the confidence that not even the 32-ounce cup of caffeine I’d had for the drive home would keep me from falling happily to sleep about two seconds after I hit the pillow. That. Was a good day.

This morning we wrote thank you notes to teachers and picked giant pink rhododendrons from the bush out front, because it’s the very last day of school. I’m looking forward to a long weekend, a work-less Monday, and then a new routine. I like summer. I like how much easier it is to get my hours in (of work) when I don’t lose an hour traveling to and from school. I like taking the boys to the library during the day and baseball games at night. I like the extra sunshine and the feeling that even though grownups don’t technically get one, it is totally summer vacation.

I hope you get a little of that feeling this weekend. Happy Memorial Day from serenity now.

Most of you dear people who read my blog would say that the only way to vote responsibly is to study the candidates. Some of you would add, “and to pray.” I admit when it comes to studying, I’m failing this course. I study writing and parenthood and books I need to read and educational attractions in Washington D.C. and museums in Chicago. But I just haven’t made the time to compare voting records, figure out what the heck they were actually voting on, and research the financial data that would tell me once and for all what’s wrong with our economy and which guy has the right idea for fixing it. Truthfully, I have begun to wonder if that is even possible.

Is it possible to truly understand what’s wrong with our economy and who has the right idea for fixing it? Is it truly possible for me – a girl in small town Missouri who is much more obsessed with her 2-year-old than with foreign policy – to understand today whether or not we should have gone to Iraq? Whether or not withdrawing now would be a defeat? If the leaders of our nation can’t agree on that, can I even begin to understand it?

I feel that because I have failed to study, and because I have lost a bit of faith in my ability to hear God speak on something like that – I’ve lost that faith because I know too many Christians absolutely convinced in opposing directions – I feel that because of those factors, what I’m left with is trying to figure out which candidate I believe. They fundamentally disagree on all of those big things – and fundamentally disagree is their phrase for it – the economy, Iraq – even each other. They disagree on each other. They tell me the other guy isn’t telling me the whole story about his health care plan. They tell me the other guy is lying about what he supports, because he voted for this or that thing that proves it.

They each think they know what to do. And I feel that all I’ve left myself to vote with, is my heart. And whether or not I believe them.

Perhaps, without slinging anything too ugly or hateful, you could just give me some suggestions on how you came to your decision and what else you’ll be carrying into the booth besides your heart. And if you even carry that – as I know of course, it can be misleading.